Deals on Facebook launches to compete with group buying sites

If you’ve already logged into your Facebook account this morning, you were asked to opt-into Deals on Facebook, a Groupon-like daily discount offering. So far, only businesses in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco are able to offer discounts to locals for dance classes, outdoor sports, concerts, and more. From what we can see, the San Diego deals look strikingly similar to the local sponsored ads on the sidebar for Businesses to “Like”.

If you don’t see your city on the Deals on Facebook page, you can sign up to be notified when your city becomes available. Users can buy coupons directly though Facebook, post it on their wall, “Like” the deal, and share the deal with their friends. And if you really want to get into the mix of it, you can post comments on the deal’s Facebook wall, which other social group buying sites, like Groupon, are already including on their own deal pages.

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Facebook already offers Check-in Deals, which uses Facebook’s Places branch to allow local businesses to offer immediate discounts and freebies when you check into a business and share it on your wall.  

Facebook also says it will make it easier for users to get deals from smaller group buying sites like Plum District and Open Table – before it competes with the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial. Google Offers beta just launched days ago. Read more about it here.

With all of these talks about walls, likes, posting, sharing, deals, and check-ins, it seems as if Deals on Facebook seems like a bit of a social overload. We'll delve deeper into the site and tell you what we think.